Innovation (technologicallly driven) – Page 17

The ransom monster

Now that the ‘No way josé’ solutions against ransomware [regular back-ups, virtualisation of servers, and tight intrusion controls et al.] have become so widely known, and ransomware having evolved to be more of the APT kind (incubating for up to six months before striking — undoing your back-up strategy), a new look at the root cause of the harrassment:

Ransomware is a Monster. Being a thing that refuses to fit a single category for neat classification (sociology/science definition/term).

Which may seem odd, but consider:

It (?) uses Confidentiality-sloppyness to enter;
It undoes Integrity;
Its payload aims at destruction of Availability, both in the Immediate and the Reasonably-timely kinds.
[Bonus: It doesn’t care about (your) morality but strikes even (?) at hospitals et al.]

Capice? … Oh, you wanted a Solution, or a Morale. Maybe something with Blended Defense / Step Up Your Game or so. Well, be my guest …, and:

[The ultimate Up Yours [ , Planning Commission of Racine!], by of course the venerable Frank Lloyd Wright]

Two stikes and you’re out of third party standards

What a wobbling title.

When already for a second time (here), the European Supreme Court has ruled that laws requiring broad (meta)data retention for trawling are illegal per se, with a minute few exceptions, making it illegal to consider it legal (i.e., have a law requiring it — which of course is much stronger than just doing it on private company want) you’d better comply.

That’s all, folks, only adding the following thus undoing that:

You may read back some posts on how to pull off better Privacy (-compliance) in a fun and efficient way;
And note how this seems to run counter the above, or does it ..? Distinction is finer than initially thought;
Standards as yet fail to address sufficiently the main cause of leakage, being third parties or in your case, second parties; known for being the #1 Saying Yes (on paper) Doing No when it comes to maintaining security to the impeccable standards of yours. Those impeccable standards of yours that … can’t even seriously assume you’re at those levels. Can’t assume the second parties are anywhere near your levels even, because of their business model which is Profit over Non-profit [think that through] so have no incentive to take the moral high ground and all the incentives to the opposite … Those second parties of course are in your standards (are they? certainly not everywhere) under transparency towards ~~first parties (customers)~~ regulators if ever they’d look so (only just beyond skin-) deep or rather disregard the issue;
If not when those your standards would have been clear enough to yourself to collect and put them up as requirements, and properly communicated to the second parties, and (checked to have initially been) implemented with them;
But then no-one really knows how to pull off even core but real oversight over the infosec quality at second parties — don’t fool yourselves: reporting, always throught their Marketing/Sales, will give no real info (info being the things you’d want to notice, not the stuff you can skip because it’s green lights/smileys all the way); actual audits, are either by third parties most usually on pay of second parties hence on their hand (don’t believe the outright lie of independence [I’ve been there, countless scores of times..]) e.g., when ISAE- or other certification is in play (certification after petty-rules-compliance checking not Auditing see tomorrow’s post) or by your own auditors — how good are they, anyway, when this outsourced stuff is special to them too (as you outsourced, their knowledge / experience re this, tumbled) and again it’s a side show to their audit universe, hard to pull off (have a look at the notification requirements and their freedom of movement in the contracts…) and still with an interest of the second parties to show a nice picture not truth which is almost completely in their hands, or by some third party hired and paid by you, for which the latter flaw of pretty-picture needs; the Diginotar case anyone?
Summa summarum: You may be hosed.

Even more so, when it comes to Privacy. Either as an organisation, or as private person [ditch the oh so pejorative ‘individual’ and ‘citizen’ — don’t start me on the utter ridicule of the moronic ‘corporate personhood’], or both.

Oh well:

[May be prone to strike the wrong way, too, anyway; DC]

DoS Internals

No, no typo. Not DOS Internals or so. Rather, internal DoS attacks.

Are they tractable? [Uhh, that may sound like they’d be positive things to be able to do — sorry, just hinting at “technical feasibility” here]

Yes they are. Stuxnet was the prime example. Something similar would be tractable once one is (somewhat) on the inside, I guess. Like, an APT exploring the internal networks for topology, infecting routers along the way, and then blowing them up all, all at once, with megazillion tons of traffic, internally generated. Denying (internal) network services to all. Or even bricking routers with e.g., flash-ROM attacks. Feasible.

The same, with surreptitious tweaks of kernel scheduling processes, Stux style. Or, there, too, diving deep into and under the virtualisation layers and bricking the core BOISsen and other Level 0 / 1 server software. Overflowing disks with random data (be sure to buffer tons, so restarts / re-mounts will not help too easily).

Hmmm, once one starts thinking about it, the possibilities are huge. Maybe some nationstate party/ies has some arsenal out there in the wild already. Think yesterday’s post; on its own or in combo with Elections, whose interests where?

Oh whatever … plus:

[A hole in your servers’/routers’ “floatation” capabilities will sink your infra; Baltimore]

Did / Did Not (Know Who Did)

Anyone still have an overview of where we (?) stand qua attribution of “cyber” attacks [ #ditchcyber, of course ] ..?? Apart from this…

There’s so much development in attribution with or without proof, e.g., about hacking elections in some outer corner of the world’s population; was it truly hacks, was it some nation state, was it some scapegoat hackster, was it all a set-up, where are Wikileaks, Anonymous, [fill in your favourite Four Horsemen party and colour the pictures] … the possibilities are endless.

But there are indeed flashes like this and this, which spark some controversy whilst blurring the overall picture. And we’d want unblurred pics of hotel room showers oh wait not I.
And what with all the tools out there (remember, the FBI’s stash stolen and now on fire sale for 99% off the previous list price, right?), planting others’ fingerprints and DNA, so to speak (no, literally ..!), and have pictures and videos even that are near-indistinguishable from proof; what evidence if any is still admissible in courts? None …!? So, what attribution …!?

When others talk about “controlling the cyber battlefield” (no, not the FBI but the extraterritorial agency), isn’t there a protracted “cyber” [ #ditchcyber ] world war under way already ..? Just not as hot as the previous one, more like the Cold one, schlepping on ..?

Just accept all Peace For Our Time‘s … and:

[The SocMed approach: Look! Moose babies!]

Ad Lib / Logic

About some ‘logic’ in an @bookingcom ad.

Where this, commonly well-regarded, travel site sent some spam: “Umbrella in hand, J, it’s raining deals!”
Which may or may not be true, but

If it’s deals that it’s raining, I wouldn’t necessarily want to shrug them off with an umbrella
If it’s deals, why associate them with bad weather which I may want to escape, through the deals
Can’t the deals be collected on some company web site or so; why should it rain into my Inbox?

So, methinks the ad is a wide-net phishing run. Right ..?

Oh, and:

[Old analog pic; now there‘s deal weather …! Martinique — once was business travel location 😉 ]

Hacking not allowed

… at least, if you’re from an official agency that would have to stick to basic rules of common decency.
Despite the push for the police to be allowed to exploit backdoors (and not report/repair them), the thing seems to not sit well with supreme legislation… (link in Dutch; with PDF and/or give Alphabet’s translator a try) — apart from making us all including themselves, much unsafer…

We’ll see. And:

[The humane workplace — non doctored pic; Zuid-As Amsterdam]

Two AI tipping point(er)s

You may have misread that title.

It’s about tips, being pointers, two to papers that give such a nice overview of the year ahead in AI-and-ethics (mostly) research. Like, this and this. With, of course, subsequent linkage to many other useful stuff that you’d almost miss even if you’d pay attention.

Be ware of quite a number of follow-up posts, that will delve into all sorts of issue listed in the papers, and will quiz or puzzle you depending on wether you did pay attention or not. OK, you’ll be puzzled, right?

And:

[Self-learned AI question could be: “Why?” but to be honest and demonstrating some issues, that’s completely besides the point; Toronto]

No, you're hacked

OK, we have a couple of little things:

“It’s not if but when an organisation is hacked”
This leads to access to some of your personal data however innocious (or not)
Only a handful of your however innocious personal data is needed to identify you and/or take over your ID
Your personal data however innocious on the surface (sic) is with so many organisations.

Syllogically, ID theft will ruin your life, pretty soon.

Now you may counter that … blabla you’re not interesting enough (maybe, but how sure are you, and if you’re so clean your ID has value to the not-so-clean), it won’t happen to you because it hasn’t happened to you (yet, that’s the point) … et cetera.

But oh, you will be hit …

And with that positive reminder, this:

[If life were as simple as at once major global city Edam…]

Four horsemen, with a badge

Now that ‘our failproof heroes of integrity’ (one of those five words is correct) have gained the right to hack and exploit each and every users’ device in their battle (huh) against the four horsemen, each, all and every proof of misconduct of however grave or minor import that anyone would conduct using any such ‘cyber’ device would not hold in court because no-one can prove it was the general user / suspect (sic) that put the data onto there or used it and the police would be implicated as well but cannot prove satisfactory it wasn’t them.

Obliterating any chance of ever proving actual foul horsemen…

But hey, they seem to have wanted that. For a reason? E.g., the above suspects were in majority already among the pursuers ..?

Why would I care… and:

[Your ‘straight’ thinking…; Zuid-As Amsterdam]

Throwback Thursday: Coke not (?) Classic

This Throwback Thursday (new category indeed — here), we start off with a Piece of Art, both qua visuals and musical score…
Of course, this can only be, and the title refers to, this. Click and admire.

We’re done.